Children should be seen and not heard
Do as I say not as I do
Don’t care was made to care
No pain no gain
Spare the rod and spoil the child
Speak when you are spoken to, not before
What you don’t eat now you will get as breakfast
These are just some of the admonishments I regularly heard when I was young. Most often, emphasised or reinforced by the laying on of hands. What this practice did for me I cannot be sure. I did discover that they were all very valid if I wished to avoid pain. I soon learnt the sort of conduct that would bring about their being voiced along with their associated sting. None of them made me feel like taking a (non-existent) automatic rifle into school or mess about with the brakes on the parental car. I suppose that I had no resentment about my treatment as it seemed all other children were treated much the same. One regularly saw children being smacked about the head or on the backs of their knees exposed below short trousers. Life was hard and brutish for youngsters.
Now, of course, all of the above are totally out of order. Anyone employing these methods of child training and discipline would rightly end up in court. In the main, children grow up in a world of kindness and forbearance of their juvenile conduct.
Wonder why it is that almost anything one looks at in respect of the youth of today, we find they have many problems and cause many problems? Isn’t there a neat little saying about throwing baby out with the bath water?
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